Monthly Archives: November 2009

I’m a slow parent

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We’ve all seen them – the parents who oversee every aspect of every activity or milestone their children make. They are referred to as “helicopter parents.” I knew one a while back. Her son was 12 and she was unable to let him stay home sick from school by himself. She screamed at his soccer coach and teachers because she felt they were treating him differently by requiring him to do the minimum amount of work. Huh?

I’ve often wondered how to draw a balance between the now-idyllic childhood I had Growing Up OC and the over-scheduled, over-homeworked, over-supervised childhood I see my peers’ children experiencing.

We walked to school, often crossing major streets.

We waited at the bus stop alone until our friends showed up.

We drank unfiltered water from the hose and played in the dirt.

We sold Girl Scout cookies door to door.

We rode our bikes over to our friends houses, after school, and came home when it got dark.

We didn’t play organized sports from age 4.

We didn’t have homework in kindergarten. We didn’t even have homework until the 5th grade!

We walked or rode our bike to doctors appointments, the mall, and Mile Square Park.

ALL WITHOUT CELL PHONES.

Certainly, times are different, and I am sensitive to the changes wrought by a more cynical society with greater access to news media. There are more challenges that involve technology and there are more gangs in high schools. I never worried about getting hurt at school. Ever. A gang fight would have been between the surfers and the Mexicans and they would punch each other until the principal showed up. I wonder sometimes if child abductions were just as common back in the day, but we just didn’t hear about them. Yes, it’s scary out there these days.

But – and it’s a big but – I want Melody to enjoy her childhood. I don’t want her to feel like she has to play soccer, baseball, basketball, or any sport if she doesn’t want to. If she does want to, I want her to enjoy it without the pressures of having to win. I want her to feel the freedom to make some decisions based on good judgement – like visiting a friend after school – and understanding the consequence of not getting her homework done.

There’s a great article about parenting on Time.com, and that’s what got me thinking about this. The new “backlash” against helicopter parenting is called “slow parenting” and in true American form, you can take a class on how to be a slow parent. Read the article and then consider the irony in that. Anyway, slow parenting advocates allowing your kids to make mistakes in order to learn from them, letting them get stuck so they independently figure out their resources to get out of the bind. That sort of thing. You know, kind of like how my parents raised me.

I think I am a slow parent. I think that’s okay.

Our Deepest Thanks

Posted in Baking, Misc by

Today is Veteran’s Day. Days like today mean more than light traffic on the freeway, no school, mail or banking, although it seems some people only look at it that way. This is a tradition that started with a great relief that the War to End All Wars was over. That is certainly reason to celebrate! You might have heard of Armistice Day, or maybe not. Let’s learn a little bit about this holiday that we don’t really celebrate any more.

World War 1 was raging in Europe since 1914 and America had become involved in April 1917. At the time it was referred to as The Great War, and really, it was a great and terrible war with battle tactics that shock our senses still today. Trench warfare was bloody and almost certainly fatal to participants. Initially, America had adopted a policy of neutrality, both militarily and in terms of ongoing trade and finance. The President at the time, Woodrow Wilson, was seen as a peacemaker who sought treaties and peaceful resolution to the war on several occasions. Up until Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917, he was seen to have given every effort to keep America safe while helping to broker peace in Europe. Within the first three months of 1917, seven American merchant ships had been sunk and Germany was caught trying to incite Mexico to join with them against America. Wilson and Congress had had enough, and in April 1917 war was declared.

In just over one year, the United States sent almost five million men to war in Europe. Of those, we lost 116,516 and over 200,000 were wounded but not mortally. When you factor in all military and civilian casualties during the course of the war there were 16 million deaths and 21 million injured. Just to put that into perspective, the total number of dead is equal to twice the modern population of New York City.

America’s entry into World War 1 is often seen as the catalyst to bringing the war to an end. The Allies and the Germans were tired. They had been fighting since 1914. Germany was fighting on multiple fronts and the surge of fresh troops from America overwhelmed them. In 1918, an Armistice was announced to take place at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month – November 11 at 11 a.m.

Soldiers of the 353rd Infantry near a church at Stenay, Meuse in France, wait for the end of hostilities. This photo was taken at 10:58 a.m., on November 11, 1918, two minutes before the armistice ending World War I went into effect – image from the US Department of Veterans Affairs

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1918, bringing the Great War to an end.

In 1919 the first Armistice Day was proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson, and he stated “To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.” The day was intended to be a reflection on all that had been lost to restore peace in the world. Through the 1920s, these celebrations were carried out with great success and included the dedication of a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetary on November 11, 1921. By the end of the decade, Armistice Day had been proclaimed a state holiday in most states and was Federally recognized. By 1938, it was established as a holiday for Federal employees, and most states followed suit.

By 1954, the number of veterans in America had swelled to the hundreds of thousands due to World War II and the Korean War, and President Eisenhower passed legislation changing Armistice Day to Veteran’s Day so as to include all veterans of all wars.

There has been a little fiddling with the date of observance over the years, but tradition kept bringing it back to November 11th, regardless of what day of the week it fell.

The holiday is meant to be a time to recognize our great heros at home and work toward peace abroad. So, today, if you can find it in your heart, please thank a veteran for all they have done for our great country and the preservation of peace in the world.

Sources: US Department of Veterans Affairs, The History of Veteran’s Day

What IS in a name?

Posted in Melody, Misc by

When we were deciding names for our daughter, we agonized over the decision. We wanted to be sure to select a name that would be distinctive and cute, traditional but a little bit different. Something that would coordinate with our last name nicely and not spell a bad word in its initials. Since we named her Melody, two more friends have named their daughters Melody. Choosing a child’s name is really a difficult decision for some parents. It can have repercussions through grade school if it’s weird or unusual – I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called Aunt Martha by my peers! – and really, I don’t get the strange spellings we are seeing these days. I joked with Tara that we could spell my daughter’s name Melo’Dee. It was a joke though, don’t worry!

The middle name for some people is just as important. We settled on Rae, simply because we wanted to honor her grandfather Ray who will never have the joy of knowing her. Other old family names have been used in my family. John’s family seems to go with names new to the family. My friend really wanted to name her son Joaquin but her husband objected so that fell to the middle name.

Coordinating the first and middle names is difficult enough, but you have to look at how it all goes with the last name. You don’t want to wind up with a funny word spelled out in initials! One of the names we considered was Emilie (an old family name) and the middle name Grace, but John pointed out her initials would be EGG. Off went those names to the recycle bin. Rosemary Angela Gibbons? Nope! Henrietta Alice Gibbons? Uh, no. Francis Andrea Gibbons? Never! You get the picture.

Today I read an article expressing outrage – outrage I say! – that women change their last name upon marriage. Wait, back up a second…what? The author was seriously irritated that women give up their identity when they change their names after marriage. I really need to think about this, because personally I never thought of my last name as my identity, or even that changing it would change me. I always figured that when I got married, the act of combining my life with another person would be the big change. My name change is my badge of pride in being the wife of who I am married to! Our daughter shares our name too, and we are a family identified on paper by that name.

But again, that doesn’t make us who we are, does it? It’s not like we are the bin Laden family – that poor family is forever linked to Enemy #1, just like the Hitlers were. As a mere peon, doesn’t what I do in my life shape who I am rather than a name?

The article mentioned things like “would you want to listen to songs by Barbara Brolin? (Barbara Streisand)” Well, personally no, because I don’t care for her, but aside from that, I think this is a poor example. A person with an established media name becomes that commodity. If Barbara Streisand had really become famous as Barbara Apple Pie, we’d find that the norm and Barbara Streisand the tongue twister. It’s rare for a celebrity to change their name after marriage because it’s their trademark – and many times it isn’t their “real” name anyway, lending creedence to the trademark concept in the first place. Who wants to buy records by John Deutchendorf? Well, no one, but they sure lined up to buy them from John Denver, and I’m pretty sure the masses were not really interested in going to see Stanley Eisen front a band, but the minute he walks out on stage with a big black star painted over one eye, everyone knows Paul Stanley of KISS.

So, who we are…is it defined by our names? Or by how we live our lives? Or by the lessons we learn and teach?

If you ask me, I don’t think changing my name caused me to give up my identity. My name doesn’t make me, the same as my career or my choice of home town do not make me.

I make me who I am.